https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=oMBPJsPeaqo
Another way of thinking about this too, you know, in the Abrahamic stories, God calls to Abraham to get him to leave his father’s tent. He’s there like till he’s 80, you know, lagging around, lolling around being useless and the call to adventure arises and it’s attributed to the voice of God and Abraham goes out in the world and he has a hell of a terrible time of it. He encounters famine and tyranny and conspiracy to steal his wife and like it’s really quite dreadful to the point where you might think that Abraham was a lot better off just being in his tent, but the story insists that Abraham’s adventure is not only necessary but a precondition for well, for the entirety of Western civilization that follows in his stead essentially. And so that’s it’s difficult but necessary. And I think there’s an analogy between the voice that calls Abraham as an individual away from his father’s tent, you know, the safe confines of his father’s tent and the political voice that calls Moses to pull his entire people out of the tyranny in in Egypt. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable parallelism. And so God in that situation is the voice of adventure and the voice of freedom. Okay, now Moses heeds this call and convinces the Pharaoh eventually to let the Israelites go and so they leave tyranny and the story is very interesting to me because it’s so sophisticated in structure because you might think once you get out of the tyranny problem solved, right? And you could even think about this in terms of the tyranny of your own preconceptions. You drop your the constraints you’ve laid upon yourself, the arbitrary constraints you’ve laid upon yourself or you stop imposing your will on other people or you escape from political or social tyranny and everything is immediately better. And that’s not what happens in the story at all. What happens is that the Israelites go from the tyranny into the desert and it’s not obvious at all that the Israelites are going to go to the desert. It’s not obvious at all that the desert is an improvement over the tyranny and it’s also a very strange story because if you think about the story geographically the desert that the Israelites were hypothetically wandering through isn’t that big and they’re there for like 45 years and you think well that’s kind of a failure of leadership. It’d take like two weeks to walk across the desert yet they’re out there for 45 years or 40 years. What can that possibly mean and what it means I think it means a variety of things but one apart from the fact that it’s out of the tyranny into the desert which is really something to think about. Like why won’t you drop your stubborn preconceptions if they’re just constraining you, you know? Or why would people subject themselves to totalitarian oppression if they could just let it go and then everything would be alright? And the answer is everything wouldn’t be alright. It might get worse initially and that’s sort of what seems to happen in the Exodus story. It’s like in the desert and how long? 40 years, three generations. So you might think well we’re better off in the bloody tyranny and lots of times we’ve seen this in the modern world. There were no shortage of people in the Soviet Union once the Soviet Union collapsed even after the terrible 1990s who were what would you call it? Reminisced fondly about the good old Stalinist days and you can kind of understand that because maybe knowing exactly what you should be doing all the time is preferable to not knowing what the hell is going on ever and maybe that’s the distinction between the tyranny and the desert. You know, you drop the tyranny but then what? Well, what happens in the desert? The Israelites are wandering around there for like decades and they fight amongst themselves and Moses has to act as a judge. I won’t get into that too much but he judges them for a very long period of time for many many hours every day trying to help them regulate their behavior now that they don’t have a central authority. They also become faithless that the story insists upon this that they lose their faith in the God that called them out of Egypt. And so you could say they lose faith. This is one way of thinking about it. They lose faith in the principle of freedom and it’s not that surprising because now they’re free. They’re in the desert and so that’s kind of rough. And so why would they be? Why wouldn’t they continue with their faith? Why would they be? Why would they be? Why would they be? Why would they be? Why wouldn’t they continue with their faith in the God that called them to freedom? Says well look where you brought us. This isn’t so good and then they start to worship false idols and that’s relevant to tonight’s topic of discussion because we’re talking about ideology, right? I said abandon ideology. It’s the same idea false idols. What makes an idol false? The Israelites are thinking well God and his desire for freedom brought us to this desert. How about a new God? You know one that’s not so annoying. Let’s say and so that’s all well and good and they start worshiping all sorts of different idols. Golden calf for example and they’re having a final time of it fractionating into their multiple groups of belief. Worshipping false idols. Should make just a side note about what worship means because it’s a weird word. And I would say you know if you hero worship someone then you want to be like them. And so worship has that fundamental element of mimicry. And so that’s tied nicely to this notion that what you believe is what you act out. Not what you say is true. And so to worship something is to be compelled by the desire to imitate it. You know you might say well if you were a big fan of a star you might someone make a joke near you and say well you worship that person. It’s like well it’s not exactly a joke. The grip of that admiration is part of the impetus to imitate and so then I would say well just as what you value most highly is that which you act out. What you worship is that which compels you to imitate. That’s what the act of worship means. To imitate and to celebrate. To celebrate is to put at the highest place. To say this is the highest of values. And so now the Israelites are out in the desert and they’re worshiping false idols. Which means they’re putting the wrong thing in the highest place. And then we have the same objection. How do you know that it’s the wrong thing? Which is the same question. How do you know when a belief is an ideological belief and when it’s valid? Or can you even say such a thing? And how do you know when you’re saying it that you’re not just falling into the same trap? I’m trying to puzzle it out piece by piece. I want to tell you a side story here and then we’ll go back to the narrative. Couple of side stories. On the back of your dollar bill there’s a pyramid. And at the top of the pyramid there’s a cap and the cap is separated from the pyramid and there’s an eye in the cap. Okay. Then in the Washington Monument, the top of the Washington Monument, there’s a pyramid and at the top of the pyramid there’s a cap and it’s made out of aluminum. In ancient Egypt that cap was made out of gold. The reason it’s made out of aluminum in Washington is because aluminum was more expensive than gold when the Washington Monument was made and they wanted to make the cap of the pyramid which is the thing at the very top of the pyramid. They wanted to make it out of the most valuable material. Now why would you want to make what’s at the top of the pyramid out of what’s most valuable? And the answer to that is something like the thing that’s at the top of the pyramid, since it’s at the top, should be the thing that’s most valuable. And what’s most valuable? Well gold’s valuable. Why? Well, it’s like the sun. It’s incorruptible. It’s a noble metal. It gleams like the sun. It’s a symbol of value. And so the notion there is that the thing that’s at the very pinnacle of the pyramid should be the thing that’s most valuable. And then we’re back to the question. How do you know that something is valuable compared to something else? Okay, so put that aside back to the Exodus story. So the Israelites are worshiping all these false idols and God’s getting upset about this. And he sends a bunch of poisonous snakes in amongst the Israelites to bite them. And which seems kind of heavy-handed, you might say, because the poor Israelites, they’re thinking tyranny, desert, snakes, you know. Enough. And fair enough, you know, I have all sorts of sympathy for their position because out of the tyranny into the desert, that’s no joke. And then to add snakes to that seems like too much. But doesn’t matter because you’ll find yourself in your life at times when you’ve gone out of the tyranny into the desert and you’re suffering plenty and then the snakes come and you’re suffering even more. And while the Israelites get together and they go to Moses, they get together and they think, okay, okay, enough snakes. We’ll repent. They go to Moses and they say, look, we get it. Can you have a chat with God? Get him to call off the snakes. And so Moses says, I’ll see what I can do. And he goes and has a chat with God and he says, you know, you’re stiff neck people. It’s a reference to the Pharaoh. Repent. Do you think you could do something about the snakes? And God has a perfect opportunity there to just get rid of the snakes since he brought them. But that isn’t what happens and that’s extremely it’s extremely strange at least. Now, I’m not going to claim that what I am going to tell you that I think it means is what it means because who knows these things. But I think we could all agree that at the very least that’s very strange. The whole story is strange, but that’s strange. Moses goes to God. He says, you could call off the snakes and God doesn’t. He says something almost incomprehensible. Instead, he says, you should take a Moses already has a staff. It’s the staff of Moses and he’s done all sorts of magic tricks with it before, like turning it into a snake and having it turned back into a snake. I won’t get into that. That’s a very interesting idea in and of itself, but God tells Moses staff is also the staff of God. It’s the thing that Moses relies on. It’s in some sense, it’s the thing he can lean on. And so the staff is something you can lean on. And when you’re walking, of course, the staff helps you stand and walk. And so it’s a support. Anyways, God tells Moses take the staff and cast it in bronze and then cast a snake in bronze. So make a sculpture and stick the snake on the staff and put the staff in the ground and then have the Israelites go look at the snake. And if they do that, then they won’t be poisoned when they get bitten. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They’ll be poisoned. They won’t be poisoned when they get bitten. And you think what the hell is going on with that story? It’s like it’s so peculiar. You know, this is this is one of those situations with the story. You think there’s either something deep going on here or it’s completely I don’t know what your conclusion can be. It’s incomprehensibly strange, but that’s the story. And so anyways, the Israelites go and they look at the snakes, the snake. And then they’re not poisoned anymore. And then something, here’s a weird, even a weirder twist on that story. So many thousands of years later, Christ says, according to the Gospels, that he has to be lifted up like the snake Moses hung on the staff in the desert. Which takes a story that’s already unbelievably peculiar and makes it way more peculiar. Because you think, well, why in the world would someone who is reputed to be the savior of humanity? Regardless of whether or not you believe that, why would he associate himself with a snake? And then especially given, you know, the reputation of the snake and more particularly, why associate that snake with why associate himself with the particular snake that Moses used because God told him to in the desert? It’s another one of those situations where there’s either something going on here that’s extremely mysterious or it’s or what is it? What is it? Is it a kind of insanity? Like it’s it’s not obvious at all what to do with that story. But here’s what you do with it. If you’re a clinical psychologist, or if you’re me and you’re a clinical psychologist, one of the things we have learned is that we’ve learned a couple of things as clinicians. Let’s say here’s one honest speech cures people. Right? So Freud, in some sense, was the first person to really formulate that clinically. He said, come to my practice and you can lay on this couch and you just say whatever comes into your mind with zero censorship. And the consequence of that will be your thoughts will weigh weave a pathway to your problems, which will then reveal themselves in a manner that in principle allows you to for Freud express the emotion. Associated with the problem and be cured as a consequence. Now, I don’t think Freud had that right because it’s not the expression of the emotion that’s curative, but it is the case that. Clinicians have agreed that untrammeled speech. So that would be free speech, except in the clinical setting is in fact curative and you kind of know that right because you have people around you, perhaps that you can tell the truth to and vice versa. And there are times when well all the time that might be painful because they tell the truth and so do you, but it’s really helpful and sometimes it’s absolutely bloody necessary, right? Especially if you’re in trouble because you want someone that you can tell the truth to who will return the favor. And so and because thought is associated with adaptation, then. True thought. Is going to be associated with redemption, so the truth sets you free in that regard. And so that’s one thing that clinicians have all converged on regardless of their school of clinical endeavor. And here’s another. If you voluntarily confront what you’re afraid of. You get braver. And so the behavior therapists. The Freudians figured this out a bit because they would have you revisit. Trauma that occurred earlier in your life. And that’s a pretty common therapeutic technique. We should talk about those things that still plague you emotionally. I don’t think we should talk about them so that you get to express the associated emotion. I think we should talk about them. So you figure out how it was that you were vulnerable enough so that you got hurt and then figure out how to not have that happen anymore. I think that’s really the conclusion of a century’s worth of clinical practice. But the other conclusion is you face what you’re afraid of voluntarily. You get better. So if people have a phobia of elevators, they’re agoraphobic, you can teach them slowly to approach an elevator and to open it and to go inside it. And their fear of the elevator will radically decrease. And their fear of many other things will decrease simultaneously because it turns out that when you face the things you’re afraid of voluntarily. You don’t get less afraid. You get braver. And that’s better than less afraid because imagine if it’s just less afraid, you’d have to expose yourself to every single thing you were ever afraid of, you know, in order to become less afraid. But if you got braver, you just expose yourself to some of the things that, you know, you’re that intimidate you. And there’d be a growth of personality as a consequence of that. And then you’d be better off in facing all of the things you’re afraid of. Well, that’s what happens in the desert. So, and so there’s this weird idea and I don’t know what to make of it exactly, but you can see what you can make of it. God could have just called off the snakes, but he seems to have made a decision that no, the snakes are there and there’s nothing that can be done about them. But you can make people a hell of a lot better than they are. And one of the ways you do that is by encouraging them to voluntarily confront the things they’re afraid of.